Firms cash in on employable skills

By Sangeetha Chengappa

Bangalore 

May 25: Although India's young demographic profile and a huge talent pool are contributing to her current economic boom, the spectre of youth 'unemployability' looms larger than life. Youth unemployability is a bigger crisis than unemployment itself, says the India Labour Report 2007.

The myth of mere graduation is dying out with the growing industry demand for employable skill sets. Even the government has earmarked Rs 15,000 crore this fiscal, for employable skill building among the nation's youth, which is the only way forward to sustain and enhance economic growth.

Of the total unemployed youth population of 232 million, a mere two per cent enter the services job market in the organised sector. A McKinsey study reports that only a quarter of all engineers, 15 per cent finance professionals and only 10 per cent of graduates can be employed for general positions. In such a scenario, the total addressable market for employable skills training in India has grown to a whopping $3-4 billion business, registering a ten-fold growth from just $420 million, four years ago.

"The Education market in India is around $40 billion and a large percentage of it, around $36 billion, goes into structured education, the rest of the $3-4 billion constitutes the total addressable market for employable skills training" pointed out Karthik K.S., CEO of 24x7 Learning Solutions Pvt Ltd, an e-learning implementation company. "For every 5 hires, there are 250 near-hires, which directly impa-cts the employee demand-supply equation" he said.

His firm offers courses aimed at students looking for help in communications, spoken English and personality development.

According to Mr Venkat Subramanian, founder and MD of Sri Guru Shishya Academy (SGSA), "With over 300 universities and 15,600 colleges spewing out 2.5 million graduates each year, India trails behind only the US and recently China, in the volume of employable graduates." SGSA offers short and long term job oriented courses targeted at youth aiming for sectors such as retail, travel and tourism.

There is a vast market for employable skills training in Tier II and Tier III towns as well.

Capitalising on this demand, ThinkVarsity Career School is targeting youth from semi-urban and rural areas. The company has two training centres in Electronics City and Peenya in Bangalore.

"We train non-engineering students in business English, behavioural characteristics like building a positive attitude, process and domain orientation and finally technical training," says co-founder and CEO, ThinkVarsity Career School, Karthik Padmanabhan.